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Saturday, November 24, 2007

The Longest Trip (Part 9)

The decision was made: I was going to be transferred to a specialized clinic. There was a problem, though: that clinic had interrupted its services to the private company that I had medical coverage through, effective January 1st. This meant that I would have to pay for the surgery with money from my own pocket. Once again, Rolo and his company came to the rescue and pleaded my case so convincingly that the hospital had no option other than to allow me in. After that, every time I went there I would go through the same steps: "I'm sorry, we don't work with that plan anymore". "I know, but I'm Gabriel Almada". "Oh, in that case, yes, please come in"... :-)

The Dupuytrén Institute was at about half an hour from the other clinic, also in Downtown Buenos Aires; the trip was uneventful. I grew concerned about the reaction of the people who welcomed me at the new clinic and until the doctor who was -in theory- going to operate on me saw me. The nurse who came to receive me when the ambulance arrived saw the skeletal traction and said to herself: "This is not done correctly". The same comment came from the person pushing my cart to my room. I was very worried, it became more than evident that I hadn't been taken care of properly.

The chief or Orthopedics at the hospital was a brilliant doctor called Horacio Gómez. He had seen me at the previous clinic already and had said "You need surgery ASAP. I can't do it, because I would have to charge you $5,000, so you will be treated by my right hand, Doctor Garrido, who has my utmost confidence and support". Truth be told, both seemed to be excellent professionals to me, but I was kinda sad that I wasn't going to be treated by who's arguably the best Trauma specialist of Argentina.

Once in the room, they removed the traction I had and put me on another one, with a different angle and even less weigh (6,5 kg instead of 7). If with the first traction I had always said I wasn't feeling anything, in this case I could tell the traction was working right away. I spent a day and a half literally crying because of the pain, until I finally went under surgery. Nothing would make the pain go away, and I felt like my kneecap was about to fly going through my skin. The pain was just terrible, but I was thinking "this is working, it should have been like this since the beginning" at the same time.

On Thursday January 19th, the nurse came to pick me up at 6:00 AM and took me to surgery. I said goodbye to Gaby and they put me in a room to get me ready. I was shaved, they put me on the IV... and then they sent me back. There was an urgent case so they were forced to reschedule. I was going to have surgery at 2PM.

When it was finally time, I heard the anesthesiologist talking to the surgeon as I was lying on the operating table. They were discussing the way they were going to give me the local anesthetic. "Local?", I asked. "No way, please put me to sleep, I won't stay up listening to you sawing my bones in my butt!". They hesitated, so I exaggerated things a little and quickly convinced them. Then it was time for them to find a vein they could use. My arms offered nothing to him, so they started to check on my hand and my legs. Once nothing happened, they said "Well, we will have to inject the anesthesia through your neck".

I looked at them as if they were aliens. "Through the neck?" Are you nuts?". They replied: "Don't worry, you won't feel a thing". They injected me a local anesthetic and then put the bigger syringe on. They announced "We are about to inject the anesthesia now, please count all the way to three" as they proceeded.